I’m so tired.

I had a wonderful weekend, spending time with friends, making new connections, getting out for some walking after a week of illness-induced inactivity. The sky on Saturday was full of colors–slate blue, rose blush, dove’s breast–that danced in the puddles of melting snow. Tonight, just before dinner, I greeted the hugely luminous moon as she rose over the road.

And yet, everything feels so hard right now. Our household is living precariously, skating the line of having enough collective health and concentration and energy and time to keep things working. We have enough money not to worry about how to pay the bills, yet not enough to stop up the gaps in our health, our time, our energy. One person gets sick–and not one additional thing better go wrong until they’re better, because we’re hanging on with our fingernails, holding the collective organism that is our household together with metaphorical duct tape and hope.

My sink is full of dirty dishes. My dining room floor is covered with mashed potatoes and peas. The remnants of a dozen projects and games are scattered throughout the house. My back and neck ache. My daughter is about to get a good night’s sleep, the better to gather her strength to fight me every last step of the way between waking up in the morning and going back to kindergarten after the week’s vacation.

I don’t know how it can happen, but I know that we need to build more depth to our reserves. We need a greater abundance of resources to turn this journey into something we can meet with determined joy, instead of beleaguered endurance. How to get there from here is a mystery to me. I try to keep my expectations reasonable. I am a rockstar of self-care. And I am pretty damn good at asking for the help I need these days. But somehow, it doesn’t feel like enough.